What it’s like to actually see yourself, and your, relationship onscreen
This past Monday night was the first episode of Supergirl since their midseason finale back in November. I’ve only recently started watching the show, so while the hiatus came too soon for my liking, it was also very much so a gift in disguise. It allowed me ample time to catch up on everything from the DEO to CatCo to Cadmus, but if I’m being honest, I spent the majority of my time learning all there was to know about the Alex/Maggie relationship. I know, I know, there are have been many articles written about the impact of Alex’s coming out and her subsequent relationship, but I’d like to add another.
After all, when representation this good comes around, you can’t take it for granted. Who knows when we’ll get something even remotely close to this again?
I’ve learned a few things during this time without the show. The most obvious one is that I am, without a doubt, trash (lovable, gay trash, I hope) when it comes to Alex and Maggie’s relationship, otherwise known as #Sanvers on the interwebs. I’ve rewatched every single scene they‘ve had together together, and any they have with other characters where they talk about each other (it’s gotten so bad that all of my suggested videos are from Supergirl fan accounts dedicated to this lovable pairing). I have everything about those moments memorized from the words they say, the music in the background, and even their body language.
The second thing I realized as I was constantly checking the #Sanvers tag on Twitter and Tumblr for any spoilers / insights from fellow fans was that this show, this couple, has created a community so widespread and full of love. There were discussions on everything from the clothes they wore to the way they looked at each other, in all types of languages, posted at all hours of the day and night. Even if I never truly contributed to the discussion, I always felt as if I was a part of it.
It was so inspiring reading @sapphicgeek’s tweets about her day at work talking to and comforting the girl who came in looking for Supergirl comics. It was equally frustrating and refreshing reading about the story of @hajabeg on the flight where they encountered both a hugely bigoted person and wonderfully supportive people. I loved that people made gif sets showcasing Maggie’s adorable dimples or the way she cocks her head to the side or the photos of Alex overlaid with text trying to hide her gay or the puppy-like way she holds the door open for Maggie in 2x09’s “Supergirl Lives”.
What I appreciated most, though, was reading how many lives this relationship, this show, and these characters have touched, which led me to think about how it had impacted my own. Here I was, with practically a quarter century’s worth of life experience under my belt, semi-obsessively watching and rewatching scenes from a show I hadn’t even seen all the episodes of yet (as a note of reference, this also happened several months ago when I found out about the pairing of Waverly / Nicole on Syfy’s Wynona Earp otherwise known as #WayHaught, last summer with SoSo / Poussey on Orange is the New Black, of course Lexa / Clarke on The 100, and Elena’s arc on One Day at a Time). Why?
So much of my answer came from finally being at a place in my life where I felt happy with who I was; I finally “got me” as Alex said to Maggie in 2x08’s “Medusa”. The first time I “came out” wasn’t of my own choosing; my parents found out that I had feelings for my now-girlfriend and confronted me about them on the phone while we were hundreds of miles apart. I understood the shock to an extent, but there was a reason I hadn’t told them yet. I wanted to do this on my terms, I wanted to figure out who I was, work through the other, many, problems in my life, in hopes of not getting the reaction I ended up eliciting.
I mean, earlier that year was the first time I even started seriously confronting the fact that I was, in fact, attracted, emotionally and physically, to girls. There were so many signs, hundreds, thousands of them from my life growing up that have become clearer since but I wasn’t thinking of those yet. No, what pushed me towards this realization was my burgeoning friendship with this girl. There was always some curiosity about her on my part, something that drew me in, made me kind of afraid of her, in a way, before, but when we started talking, getting to know each other, building our relationship, that’s when everything started unraveling. I couldn’t stop myself or the feelings any longer, which also meant I couldn’t stop the dismantling of the dam that kept my problems neatly stocked inside.
So when I decided to fully recognize that I had feelings for this girl, I also had to confront a whole host of problems that were, but not limited to, an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, insecurity, and years upon years of shame and guilt for not being who I thought I was supposed to be. For disappointing my immigrant parents, my Catholic family, my Filipino culture, more than I already had. For being such a failure in every aspect of my life.
After that came a long summer, and subsequent semester, where I tried to find the pieces of who I was amongst the destruction of this person I tried to be for the last twenty-one/twenty-two years. I shaved away a lot of who people thought I was, including me, in the hopes that who I’d be left with would be my true self. I thought it’d be easy to do this after being forcibly shoved out of the closet and losing so much. I thought I’d feel this great weight lift off of my chest at least knowing that I was “free”, but instead there was months of guilt and carnage to deal with.
I struggled with a lot of internalized homophobia and prejudice. I initially came out as bisexual because I was afraid of what it meant to be a lesbian, of disappointing my parents further. That scene where Alex tells Maggie that she’d tried dating men in the past when she first comes out, in 2x05’s “Crossfire”, I felt her with every word she could and couldn’t bring herself to say. I’d dated a bunch myself, but in every relationship, there was something missing. Something just wasn’t there. Something had to be forced, even if I didn’t fully understand this at the time. The intimacy was never authentic, just like Alex, and I always felt this emptiness in my stomach from pushing down those feelings and thoughts and dreams I’d always had.
Because of all this, I saw Alex’s story as something of my own. While we were in different stages of our lives, her character nearing her 30s, me just entering my 20s, we were both adults who were supposed to have at least figured things out a little bit. Friends of mine were engaged, some married, others pregnant. What was I doing? Where was I going? I felt as if my life was just beginning when I, almost a year later, was finally able to say aloud, with pride, that I was gay, a lesbian. Being in a relationship with my girlfriend, living out who I was, changed the clarity with which I saw the world.
This only reminds me of another epic speech on television that aired several years ago but has stuck with me since, Brooke Smith’s Dr. Erica Hahn’s realization after she slept with Sara Ramirez’s Dr. Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy:
“When I was a kid, I would get these headaches, and I went to the doctor, and they said that I needed glasses. I get the glasses, and I put them on, and I’m in the car on the way home, and suddenly I yell. Because the big green blobs that I had been staring at my whole life, they weren’t big green blobs. They were leaves on trees. And I didn’t even know I was missing the leaves. I didn’t even know that leaves existed, and then…leaves! You, [Callie Torres] are glasses.”
Unlike on Grey’s, though, what Supergirl showcased for me is the uncertainty on where you go from here (sidenote: I love Grey’s Anatomy and feel that they have made just as powerful statements and beautiful representations of w|w relationships, but this is specifically about Supergirl). I wasn’t a teenager anymore. I was on my own, living in a new city, working a new job, surrounded by people who had their lives figured out years prior, and yet, I walked through this world with a childlike wonder, as did Alex.
And when she decided, at the suggestion of Maggie, that it was time to come out to Melissa Benoist’s Kara in 2x06’s “Changing”, the words semi-tumbling out of her mouth and the way her face expressed every emotion from “oh fuck, how do I do this?” to “fuck, is she disappointed in me?” brought out tears and laughter. Watching her semi-panic in front of Kara, afraid that she’d lost the person she was closest to, afraid that she’d done something wrong by simply being her, I recognized those fears as my own from when I first told my friends, one by one.
And watching Kara assuage those worries kept my tears flowing. It was something out of a dream I wished for everyone going through something like this and reminded me of the friends who wrapped their arms around me in the aftermath of everything with my parents. They became my family in the days that followed, even more so than before, and whether they were half-way across the world, on the other side of the country, or right down the street, they way they loved me helped me hang on to the life I wanted so desperately to stop.
What happened next in the scene, Alex tearfully explaining to Kara why she likes Maggie, “I uh, I just like her so much you know she’s smart and she’s tough and she’s just… beautiful, she’s so beautiful”, pushed even more tears to fall. How fucking crazy is this, I thought, the world is literally burning to pieces, but this, this show right here is creating the love and hope and light that we’ve lost. They are making so much more than mere entertainment, they are creating a new reality within this world of Supergirl that our own can only hope to mirror (minus the constant battles and threats of destruction).
The way Alex struggled in the following episodes, first dealing with a rejection, then trying to explain her heartbreak to the person who crushed her, proceeding to rebuild that relationship, coming out to her mom, and finally starting this beautiful relationship with Maggie, kept me barely breathing. Each week I waited for something happen, something to go wrong. A wrench to be thrown into this too-perfect storyline. Some absurd stereotype or, more likely, one of their deaths, but nothing came.
Instead what I saw was a relationship and dynamic that’s never truly explored. Layers never seen. People talk about representation all the time now, and it can never be overstated just how important it is for people to see themselves in strong, empowered, independent women like them, finding love with each other so organically and honestly (this isn’t to say the show isn’t problematic in some ways; in fact, what I love so much about loving this show, and any show really, are the thoughtful discussions we can have on the different fronts they can improve upon).
Maybe if I had seen a show like this years prior, things would have turned out differently for me, I’m not sure, but what I do know is that thanks to Chyler and Floriana’s wonderfully real portrayal of Alex and Maggie, thanks to the thoughtful writers on Supergirl, there are millions of people watching characters who look like them. There are people seeing what love looks like outside of the boundaries and norms they’re used to seeing. There are people who look to this couple with hope that it means opening a door for new, complex, emotionally compelling w|w relationships on television and film. There are people, like me, who revel in the scenes on YouTube, because it reminds us of ourselves from either the past or present. It gives us, or at least me, so much relief and joy to see myself on screen, to see my relationship explored without it being over sexualized, without someone being stereotyped or killed off.
So, as I continue to watch everything unfold, I will undoubtedly laugh, cry, and feel so deeply for a couple so closely intertwined with myself. And then I’ll get on twitter / tumblr / youtube, and feel everything over and over again, with everyone around the world, as we rejoice in a show that finally gets us right.
Thank you. To the creators, writers, crew, actors, and everyone who works on Supergirl for this. For everything you’re doing with these characters. I can’t say that enough.
